forgetting you (but not the time)
by entersomethingcleverhere
Summary: Oliver runs into his old flame Laurel Lance and comes to peace with the person he was before. Part 6 of the "21 Guns" series


**A/N: I've gotten a few requests from readers to do a story in this series that includes Laurel, and I had been kinda leery about it, but I realized that if Felicity can get closure with her past, why can't Oliver? He needs it, too. So here we go. Laurel makes an appearance here, and I hope y'all enjoy it!**

There are a lot of reasons Oliver Queen knows that Felicity Smoak is the woman for him.

Of course, there's the obvious. She saved his life when he was an inch away from the grave. She was his emotional support when he was an ocean away from his family and friends. She continually inspired him every single day to be a better person.

Yeah, OK, so there's that.

But the reason he _most_ appreciates at the moment is this: she hates all the bullshit of planning their wedding about as much as he does.

Oliver is luckier than his fiancee in that he is largely insulated from a lot of it, since most people believe he doesn't care about the details as long as someone gives him his tuxedo ahead of time, tells him where to stand and what to say. And that is mostly true.

But every so often, he'll get dragged into running a wedding errand and no amount of bullshit or puttering around can get him out of it.

Which is precisely why he is spending a perfectly good Saturday morning shuttling between every high-end department store in Starling City with Felicity and his sister, registering for cookware and flatware and china that all looks essentially the same.

By eleven a.m., they are in their fourth store, and Oliver would have paid every single dollar in his trust fund just to be able to leave. Felicity looks like she's seconds away from snapping.

"Where's Thea?" she asks wearily.

He sighs. "I don't know. Probably asking the attendant where the lavender, Egyptian cotton towels are."

"You think we can make a run for it?"

Oliver snorts. "Not in a million years. Her nickname is Speedy for a reason."

She groans as her head falls onto her fiance's shoulders. "Ugh. Why oh why do I have to spend a precious day off from saving people's lives looking at stuff that I don't even want? We could honestly buy all of this shit ourselves. Can't we just elope?"

That makes him chuckle. "You know I'm all for that, but don't think for a second that Thea would let you get away with it."

Felicity response is a pout.

Thea finally returns from wherever she was, armed with the little scanner gun the attendant had given them for registry purposes. In her other hand, she has a list of items that she is determined to register them for, and much to Oliver's dismay, it only looks like a third of the list is checked off.

"OK, I think we've got everything in this part of the store," Thea says, her eyes scanning quickly over her list. "Want to move on to the next section?"

"Please dear God no," Felicity mutters.

"Too bad!" Thea chirps. With a self-satisfied grin, she skips — actually _skips_ — onward to whatever she's got planned next.

"Thea, why do you even need us?" Oliver calls to his far-too-excited sister. "You've got the list and the scanner. You can just register all this stuff for us, can't you?"

The teenager lets out the most exasperated sigh imaginable and turns around to glare at her big brother. "No, I _can't_ just register all this stuff for you. This is supposed to be about _your_ life together. We are trying to decide what _your_ home is going to look like! This is about _you_ guys, not me!"

"OK, but for the record, I never would have picked the silver scalloped flatware," Felicity points out.

Thea opens her mouth, surely about to treat Felicity to a two thousand-word treatise about just why the silver scalloped flatware is far superior to anything else she might have wanted, but a very familiar voice interrupts her.

"Oliver?"

The three of them turn to find the source, but he already knows the source. He knows that voice, almost as well as he knows himself. For almost five years, it had been the only thing that got him through basic training and two tours through a desert wasteland. For years he had even convinced himself that he would spend the rest of his life listening to that same voice order him around, as wives are supposed to do with their husbands.

She steps forward from a rack of summer dresses, surprise written all over her face.

"Laurel," he breathes.

She looks mostly the same. Her face might be a little thinner. The lines around her mouth might be just a tad deeper. Her hair just a little shorter. But all told, she looks like she stepped right out of his past.

Her mouth spreads into a smile, and it lights up her entire face. It's almost painful how beautiful she is, how...how very much the _same_ she is. It's like nothing about her had changed.

"It's great to see you," she says as she comes forward with her arms spread open. Automatically he meets her halfway to return her hug. They squeeze each other gently, then she takes a slight step backward so she can get a good look at him.

"You look...wow. You look great."

He smiles in return. "Thanks. So do you. You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you. Like you haven't aged a single day."

She laughs. It's a tinkling, musical kind of laugh that he always thought was so beautiful on her. "Oh please. You wouldn't believe how many dumb creams I've got to put on my face now before I go to bed."

Oliver's smile widens. "Oh, surely you're exaggerating. You were always the youngest looking of all of us. Remember all the times we'd go out and you'd get carded?"

She rolls her eyes and playfully slaps him in the shoulder. "Please don't remind me. It only brings up all these memories of spending time with you and Tommy, the idiots you were. Anyway, what are you doing here? The Oliver Queen I knew could never be seen outside of his bed before noon on a Saturday."

That pulls him out of the past so quickly it nearly gives him whiplash.

"Oh, I'm here with my sister and my fiancee." He turns to Felicity who's been standing beside him the whole time. She's looking down at something on the floor scuffing the linoleum with the tip of her sneaker. When he reaches forward to pull her toward him, she almost startles at his touch and he just grins at her.

"Laurel, this is Felicity. Felicity, this is Laurel."

He knows this is a big moment. She'd never voice it in a million years, but he knows that Felicity feels a little insecure where Laurel is concerned. He's seen it in her eyes, in the tiny way she flinches whenever anyone mentions his ex's name.

He wants to show her that there is nothing to be scared of. And he knows this for a fact because, even though Laurel looks exactly the same, beautiful as ever, he just can't take his eyes off his fiancee.

"Hi," Felicity greets, a nervous smile on her face. "It's nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

Laurel smiles right back at her. There's nothing but warmth in her expression. "It's nice to meet you too. I'd heard rumors that Ollie was finally engaged, but I never got a name or a face."

Felicity seems a little soothed by Laurel's gentle demeanor and the nervousness in her expression melts away just a little bit. "Well, I've been doing a pretty good job of dodging the paparazzi."

"Felicity!" Thea calls from the other side of the store. "Come here, I need your opinion on something."

The woman in question rolls her eyes and begrudgingly starts walking away. "Coming!" she grumbles. Then she shoots a glare full of betrayal right at Oliver, who only chuckles in response to his fiancee's plight.

"Kill me. Kill me now."

"Sorry, left all the guns at home." He leans forward and pecks her on the cheek. "Besides, if you can handle sewing mangled body parts back together, you can certainly handle registering stuff with my sister."

"You've clearly never met your sister," she mutters. But she trudges toward Thea's direction anyway.

"I see your sister hasn't changed."

He turns back to Laurel, and she has a soft smile on her face as she looks out at the teenager flitting around the store with far too much energy for so early on a weekend morning.

"If anything, she's just gotten taller and louder," Oliver quips.

Laurel laughs at that. "I remember one time when we were supposed to go out to the movies, but Thea insisted she come along with us. She totally crashed our date, but she was such a cute kid, I didn't feel all that mad about it."

Oliver snorts, thinking back to the incident she was referring to. "I did. We wanted to go see that scary movie, but since she was with us, we had to see some dumb kiddie film instead."

Her eyes dance with laughter and mischief. "Well to be honest, I didn't want to see that scary movie. The only reason _you_ did was to use your patented Oliver Queen moves to get me to snuggle up next to you."

He holds up his hand in mock surrender. "Hey, if you want to blame anyone about that technique, blame Tommy. He was the one who suggested it."

She laughs again, and Oliver can't help but like how it feels to be standing in her presence, entirely at ease. It's a complete one-eighty compared to the last time he saw her, when she confronted him about sleeping with Sara and ended their tumultuous relationship.

Back then, all he felt was shame and longing and hurt. She called him a million names that day, but what struck him the most was when she felt like an idiot for believing he could be more than just the asshole playboy that everyone thought he was.

She ended up being right, though. He turned into so much more.

"Look, Laurel," he says after a long silence between them, "I just want to say thank you."

A puzzled expression takes over her features. "What for?" she asks.

"For what you said all those years ago," he says, thinking back wistfully to that time. "When you said that I could be more than I was. You were right." He chuckles. "As usual. You were always right."

Something that looks like sadness flashes in her eyes as she looks up at him. "I read about how you joined the Army. Was that...was that after…?"

He nods. "Yeah. I just...I needed to get out of Starling. Feel like I was doing something with my life."

She bites down on her lip and fiddles with the ring on her thumb. "I feel like I should apologize," she says softly. "I said all those terrible and awful things and...and you almost died…"

He shakes his head and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. "No, don't apologize. Honestly. You have nothing to be sorry for."

Laurel takes in a deep breath before looking up at him again. "Actually, I have a lot to be sorry for. But mostly, I'm just sorry that I let you go."

It's weird, Oliver thinks to himself, how he would have given anything to hear her say those words not even two years ago, when he was still blindly in love with Laurel, hoping to win back her love by proving that he could be the guy she always thought he could be.

Now, the weight of her words don't hold much emotion for him anymore. All they do is close the door with some satisfaction on what felt like an unresolved chapter of his life.

She seems to understand this, though, if her sad smile is any indication. "She's pretty," she says, gesturing in the direction Felicity had gone off in. "Your fiancee. She's lovely."

Lovely didn't even begin to cover it. A soft smile spread across his face. "Yeah. She is. Smart as hell, too. Tommy likes to joke that she must not be all that smart though, if she's willing to marry me."

Laurel chuckles at that. "And are you happy?"

He nods. "Happier than I've ever been."

She tilts her head to the side, as if she's trying to examine him closely. Then she smiles, as if she realizes he's telling the truth. "I can see that."

With that, she steps forward to wrap her arms around him and press a soft kiss against his cheek. "Congratulations, Ollie. I'm really happy for you."

He smiles down at her, gripping her hand with his. "Thank you. I really appreciate that."

She steps away, the sad grin still gracing her beautiful face. "Anyway. I should let you get back to your shopping. I'll see you around."

He nods and they wave goodbye. Then he turns on his heel in search of his sister and fiancee, only to find them in the bed sheets and linens section of the store, Thea as chipper as ever and Felicity looking almost close to tears.

"Thea, I think that's enough wedding registering today," he says firmly as Felicity's face lights up with hope. "Felicity doesn't get a lot of days off, so we're going to spend the rest of it doing something she actually enjoys."

The teenager makes a face at her brother. "I'm not six, Ollie. You two want to go back home so you can screw each other's brains out."

"Thea!" Felicity screeches, her cheeks turning red from embarrassment.

But she just smirks and waves them off. "Fine, fine. Go on and do your own couple-y things. I'll finish registering for your stuff here so I don't have to hear about either of you complaining about it anymore."

"Thanks, Speedy," he says as he steps forward to press a kiss on her temple. "I'll see you tomorrow for brunch."

Felicity hugs Thea goodbye, and Oliver reaches down to take her hand and lead her out of the store.

"You're a godsend," she tells him fervently as they walk out the automatic doors. "Seriously, you're the best fiance ever."

He chuckles. "Well to be totally honest, I did it for myself as much as I did it for you. It was mutually beneficial for both of us."

They climb into his black Maserati and spend the ride deciding where to go for lunch. After they come to an agreement, Felicity broaches the subject Oliver knows she's reluctant to talk about.

"So...how did that thing go with Laurel?"

He smiles. "It went well. I got some closure."

"You did?"

He hears the fear in her voice, so he pulls over to the side of the road and turns to her. Sure enough, he can see the anxiety written in every line on her face, so he takes her left hand in his and lifts it to his mouth to kiss the ring on her finger.

"Felicity, I need you to understand something. I may have joined the Army because of Laurel, but I got out because of _you_. Because I love _you_. Because I want to be _your_ husband and no one else's. You are the only person at the end of my aisle, and the end of my life. And that will never, ever change."

Her eyes well up a little with tears and she reaches forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders.

"I love you," she whispers.

"I love you too," he chuckles, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

A few weeks later, Tommy and Thea invite themselves over to Oliver and Felicity's apartment to help with the guest list. As they go over the names they know, Thea pauses awkwardly over one.

"Um...well, I guess I'll just go out and ask: Do you want to invite Laurel?"

And much to everyone's surprise, Felicity's the one who answers.

"Yes," she says with a firm nod. "We'll invite her."

Oliver raises an eyebrow at her. "You sure?" he asks.

She squeezes his hand and smiles at him with complete confidence and peace in her expression. "I'm absolutely sure."

He returns her smile and leans forward to kiss her. Weddings, after all, are about new beginnings. He and Felicity are going to start their new beginning with no regrets.

 **A/N: There's one more one-shot planned in this series and then it will be finished!**


End file.
